Sunday, January 10, 2010

Benson Mates

Only a few days ago, I found out that Benson Mates had died on May 14, 2009. As most of you might know, he spent his whole career at Berkeley. Among his works on skepticism, one must mention his Skeptical Essays (University of Chicago Press, 1981); "On Refuting the Skeptic," Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 58 (1984); and The Skeptic Way: Sextus Empiricus's Outlines of Pyrrhonism (OUP, 1996), which includes a lengthy introduction, a translation of Sextus' Outlines, and a commentary. I haven't read his Skeptical Essays, but the book is still available at the UCP's web site. Mates was among the few scholars who adopted a stance sympathetic to skepticism.